Inventory and sale by weight?

Question

Can the POS LAVU system handle inventory management and point of sale by weight instead of quantity as in the case of a butcher shop where you would receive items by weight and sell them and hence take them out of inventory by weight? Also is there any easy way to integrate a weighing scale with barcodes that it prints out for the weight of that item with POS LAVU?

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12 answers to this question

Guest David Miles

Thank you for the post. Inventory is tracked by the field it is assigned to. It isn't specifically made for weight, but if the fields are signed to say "lbs," than the system would account for it. Have any other users been able to track with weight, or use a scale barcode setup?

David Miles

Lavu

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We run a butchery/restaurant and do sell our steaks by weight. In this case the quantity is the weight and the price of the item is the price/weight (in our case is it dollars per kilogram). The quantity modifier takes decimals so say if we were to sell our Striploins (priced at USD 400 per kg for example), for an order of 0.245kg, we will key in "0.245" in when prompted for quantity and the price comes up as 0.245 x 40 = 98 dollars.

We use a separate weigh scale that can print out a number of barcode formats, but because Pos Lavu (as I understand at the moment) can't read variable price barcodes, the set the weighing machine to only print the PLU code (which is static) and have to key in the quantity for each weighed item.

We use a Linea-Pro (http://ipclineapro.com/) scanner to read this barcode where we have the item as a Menu Item with a Quantity forced modifier and the PLU Code as the UPC field (which the Linea Pro reads) which then prompts the weight.

This workaround is a bit of a hassle and it would be ideal if Lavu could eventually have an option that will be able to extract the weight from the barcode (our weighing machine is able to format the barcode in an XXXXXXXXYYYYYYYY where XXXXXXXX is the PLU and YYYYYYYY is the weight) so as to automatically add the menu item and weight to the order by just scanning the label.

Hope this helps somewhat.

Thariq

Las Vacas Meat Shop

Kuala Lumpur

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Guest Sarah

Thariq, thank you for sharing your experience on this topic! The experiences of our users is a huge asset to everyone on our forum community.

I know a lot of users would be very happy if we could have some kind of scale integration in the future. The development team has been doing research on it already. Right now, the bottleneck is actually in the technology aspect; the dev team is looking for a reliable bluetooth scale that can be integrated with our software. If any user knows of a bluetooth scale, please, let me know!

Another interesting topic regarding scales and weight measurement was posted by user DirtyDog at this thread here. DirtyDog was wondering about a liquor scale that measured the difference in the weight of a bottle of liquor pre-pour and post-pour. That certainly would be more complex than a straight weight measurement, but I'm definitely keeping tabs on what y'all are asking for!

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A bluetooth option would be awesome - but as mentioned, one old school solution since there is already a Barcode -> LineaPro -> Lavu data path, and given that Lavu already supports Open Priced/Open Weight items, and there is a wide range of label-printing weighing scales in the market which are able to output the Standard UPC-A Spec 2 (Open Price) barcode - perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult programmatically to get it all to integrate in Lavu such that scanning an item will be able to add to the order?

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Guest Sarah

I certainly couldn't say for sure the ease or difficulty of developing these items. I did inquire more about the future for scanning, and I was told that development is working on better integration with the LineaPro, including improvements for inventory in the backend. So the dev team is definitely aware that there is interest in that area, and I'll make sure to keep everyone updated on it!

Thanks for the info on the barcodes, I'll brush up on them - it's been a while since I worked in a more retail-based environment!

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I have one location that uses a scale that they can program. each item has a 4 digit code. so if someone orders something they enter that plu on the scale. drop the item to get it's weight/price and then in lavu each item is an open item for just the price and then you can enter it.

or like it was said before just sell your items at 1lbs intervals and you can just keep tapping the item for as many lbs that the item is.

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Why not you use a scale having features that you need. We are using scale in our shop and we weight foods and than pack it with a bar code on it. In this way we can easily sell our products fast without wasting time on weighting.

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when you say that you are integrated with a scale, does this mean you have moved forward with the long threated retail version of Lavu? I've had to start discussing this with Revel as they have this functionality and I now urgently need to move forward with my retail side. It needs a scale integration, this was the largest problem with most retail epos systems.